The 2009 room selection information e-mail states: “There is a chance that some students that participate in the process and do everything right will not receive a selection number that affords them the opportunity to pick a room.” Well, that’s encouraging. Once again, Quinnipiac’s housing lottery has started chaos among students and the current sophomore class has truly gotten the short end of the stick.

Maybe I’m biased because I’m a sophomore, but I highly doubt administration would have a hard time finding a few other students that have negative thoughts on our class’ current situation. Not only are we basically getting kicked off the Mount Carmel campus, but the majority of us who are kicked off campus are still going to have to pay for half of a meal plan. That makes sense. Could someone please explain to me why students that purposefully request to live in dorms with kitchens will still have to put $1000 dollars a year toward a meal plan?

Fortunately, people who live in Whitney Village will not be required to have a meal plan but I don’t really think people are jumping at the opportunity to live there. And to expand on the Whitney Village situation-I’m glad Quinnipiac is bringing transfers onto campus because keeping them separated from the main campus makes absolutely no sense. But, maybe Residential Life could have warned the current sophomores of their possible plans.

I’ve spoken with many sophomores who have said that if they had been told about this possibility they would have reconsidered paying the $500 housing deposit and explored other options. It truly would have been a very simple, considerate and just plain thoughtful step for Residential Life to explain where we would be living before we paid. I certainly hope they are prepared for angry phone calls from parents demanding their $500 back after their son or daughter is placed in Whitney Village. Maybe if students didn’t have to deal with the dreaded shuttle system to simply get to class during the day, Whitney Village wouldn’t be looked at quite so negatively.

I understand that seniors move off campus and even though my class is the first class to be guaranteed four years of housing, I’m sure many of us would have moved off as well. But juniors expect to be on campus. Sure, York Hill is going to be brand new and beautiful-which is great and I am excited to see what it looks like up there-but it still isn’t on campus. We can call it the York Hill campus all we want to make it sound more included in the little Quinnipiac bubble, but it’s not. There is just no other way to look at it. York Hill is not on campus, we will not have classrooms up there, and it won’t be the same as rolling out of bed 10 minutes before class and still making it on time. Which is the exact same thing for Whitney Village: it isn’t on campus.

It is unfair for the administration to push the current students to alternate housing options off campus just because they want to take in more freshmen. How many more freshmen are they planning on accepting? Where will all of these extra students go sophomore year? Mountainview and the Village can only hold so many people and it seems like Whitney Village will be for all students who are plain unlucky in the lottery.

I think the best solution to the housing problem is to stop accepting more students. Quinnipiac wants to grow and become more respected but, whoops! We built our main campus across from a state park. That’s kind of a big deal. We can’t expand anymore on campus; just accept that. The University can still gain more respect at its current size. If the requirements for applicants are raised or, if rolling admission is terminated, the higher caliber students would be taken before others if the pool of applicants could be reviewed over a longer period of time.

SGA President Sean Geary calls this situation “one of the biggest issue that Student Government or any student government will have faced.”

It appears Quinnipiac has bitten off more than they can chew. Don’t get caught in their teeth.